Impossible Things
by BrieflyDel
Summary: *shudder* I don't know why I'm putting this up. I'M even freaked out by it. Anyway, the prisoner in the cell across from Sirius Black witnesses several impossible things. PG-13 for extreme creepiness and mental trauma.


> "There is no use trying!" said Alice; "one can't believe impossible things"!   
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." 
> 
> Lewis Carroll, _Through the Looking-Glass_

  
My dead sister is hanging upside down from the ceiling. She's laughing at me with big bat teeth and keeps shouting "boo!" and making me scream. 

"Stoppit stoppit stoppit stop!" I shriek. "You know I don't like pendulums!" 

Her eyes grow wide and red. "What, you think I'm that?" She melts, and when she's a puddle on the floor she walks about and laughs at me because nothing inside her is solid. "What's your favorite color?" she hisses, ripping off her face and throwing it at me. 

I scream again, and when I open my eyes she's gone. A headless crane is stalking the perimeter of the room. I know I'm starting to whimper. I can't help it. _Azkaban does funny things to people, eh?_

The world is rocking. I don't know, maybe it's me. I think that's me on the floor anyway. My sister the puddle is running around on my face again. She keeps whispering things to me, and I can't lift my hand to wipe her off and shut her up. 

"Remember when you killed my toad? Remember when you spilled your soup on Grandmama and she boiled and died? Remember when you looked into the eyes of Lord Voldemort and saw--?" 

When she says that my hands turn into shovels and I hit myself with them, hoping that maybe she'll go away, or that the metal clanging noise will drown her out. I wonder, could I make myself drown in here? Maybe they'll give me soup and I'll just stick my face in it and breathe it in and then I can ask Grandmama if she really was boiling and if this was how it felt. But I don't think they'd like that. If they can't eat you then they get all sulky. 

Maniators. No no no no no no no no no. Deeeeeeeeee-men-tohrs. Demmin-tors. Demon tours! I start to giggle. Immediately it is taken away. _Give me back my soup!_ I want to cry, but I have suddenly turned to lead, wishing instead I was a magnet. 

"I think they're coming for you," my sister hisses. She's a leopard now, only she doesn't have any skin, only she's still spotted anyway. I listen. _Drip. Drip. Drip._ I can hear water or maybe it's piss or maybe it's blood but more likely it's tears that somebody hasn't drained out yet. But she is right, our meal is coming. I wonder if they use little carts like Muggles do on airplanes or like that nice lady on the Hogwarts Express _I wonder what she'd think of me now_ maybe dementors just solidify horrors and feed it to you and laugh. 

I saw a person here last week. Two persons. One I saw Hoskins but he comes down here to drag out the dead ones but two I saw green. Green fudge. Poisonous chocolate if only I had some now! Make me feel better in two ways. He kept saying black black black black just across the hall there. I can see it through my bars sometimes, if I make myself stand up, because it's something new to see and that might make me want to stay alive because _maybe just maybe_ he'll say _lestrange lestrange sorry sorry sorry_ and I'll go free. 

I start to giggle again. 

I pretend I'm a snake and slide across the stone floor and wedge myself against the crack beneath the door. I watch nothing for a while. Then my whole face turns to ice and I remember that if a mouse can get its head through a crack the rest of its body can follow. But before that I see a man with a name that's a verb and he's standing there spitting at us and behind me the young one is screaming for his mother. He got me but MY MASTER will get me I know he will. Faithful faithful me that's me. Wait wait wait wait wait. I can do that. 

Maybe I can melt out. 

I turn my eyes back to the floor because they've rolled into my head briefly. Something is creaking and it's not me. I look up to see if my sister is doing something again but she's not. Neither is Frank Longbottom. Outside, I see swishing and congealed despair. Nothing new. But I think there is. 

_**Click**-click **click**-click **click**-click._

Getting faster, and getting a little fainter. And behind it is a rank smell like an unwashed dog. 

_Dogs can't get their heads under doors!_

And who sentences a dog to Azkaban anyway? 

_some people would say you were some awful type of dog Lestrange_

I look up at my sister, who is looking remarkably like Peeves from school, only she's dripping something and she's wearing a dress that's not falling down even if her head is hanging the wrong way up. "What just left?" I ask her. She gives me a wicked grin and then I see THE GRIM. 

I push myself against the bottom of the door again. "Funny," I say to everyone. "It doesn't seem like _black black black_ is dead." 

But I don't consider the alternative. Because _that_ is frankly impossible.   
  



End file.
